Discovering Dashan

Since coming to China, I've discovered the most famous Canadian on the face of the earth. It's not Jim Carrey, Mike Myers or Shania Twain. In fact, he's barely known in Canada. But based on the sheer number of people who know his name in China, I'd say Dashan (a.k.a. Mark Rowswell) easily takes the title. I had no idea who Dashan - which means "big mountain" - was until I got here. He came to Beijing as a University student more than 20 years ago to study Chinese, and ended up mastering xiangsheng, a Chinese comedic art based on witty dialogue. He's a hugely popular actor, performer and host on Chinese TV and is said to be known by more than one billion Chinese. Dashan even has his own website: http://www.dashan.com/ Ironically, his website notes that you can watch his videos on YouTube.... sorry Dashan, but YouTube is now blocked in China!

Looking at his site, I realized Dashan is gradually becoming better known in the west. He was chosen to be the attache for the Canadian Olympic Team during last year's Beijing Olympics. He's been awarded the Order of Canada and Ford Canada uses his image in TV and print ads aimed at Chinese-Canadians.

Dashan in a Ford ad.

What I find most fascinating about Dashan is his purported ability to speak better Chinese than most Chinese people. Since embarking on my own attempt to learn Chinese ("attempt" being the operative word there!), I am in complete awe of such a feat. With few similarities to English, Chinese is an extraordinarily difficult language for a native English speaker to master.

It's one thing to learn French or Spanish or even German, which have many cognates (e.g., langue - French / language - English) and similiar sentence structures. Putonghua is something else altogether, requiring a speaker to not only know the right word, but to also know the right tone for that word. Depending on tone, ma can mean either mother, numb, horse or to scold. And as I've told Steve, one of my tutors, when translated directly into English, Chinese can sound an awful lot like Yoda - "Me very happy with you talk". This is certainly giving me an appreciation for what my students must go through in learning English.

Today was a particularly frustrating day, as I had a few instances of trying to speak Chinese, only to be met with blank stares. I had to resort to showing the characters friends have given me. At times it's tempting to say "why bother?" It's easy enough to get around here knowing only English. But I hate feeling like a baby having to point at things or having to rely on friends to translate. That doesn't exactly instill a sense of independence. In fact, my commitment to learning Chinese seems to have doubled since last weekend when I went to Suzhou with some teacher friends. They took some Chinese classes in the States before coming here and it shows. I felt like a bit of an idiot not knowing some very basic words.

I've never been a great language learner, which I mentioned in my last blog. I tend to dabble in languages based on my current interest. I do a work term in Germany and suddenly I want to learn German. My interest in French revives after a semester in France. I can't quite remember why I decided to take Spanish in University.... I sometimes forget that I got half-way to a minor in Spanish. If I'd just stuck with that instead of switching to German, I'd probably have the minor. So, I studied three languages before even coming here, and can't claim fluency in any of them.

Beyond the language ADD, my biggest problem is being afraid to just speak it. In some ways, I'm very much like my students. I hate making mistakes. I hate losing face. I focus too much on knowing how to write a language, rather than how to speak it. I've always been fascinated by the written word, which perhaps explains the English degree. But knowing how to write a language is not nearly so useful as knowing how to use it in conversation. I'm now making more of an effort to use whole sentences - however short - in stores and restaurants on campus and I'm insisting my tutors ask me questions in Chinese.

I am committed to becoming fluent in a second language by the time I finish my MBA. After all, I'm doing international business! And depending on what school I choose, a second language may be a requirement. The question is whether I'll continue Mandarin studies or go back to French. I have no doubt that French would be the easiest to re-learn.... got to love having gone to school in Canada! Language acquisition capability is largely gone by the time you're an adult, so maybe that explains why I've retained some French years after elementary school. I feel any Canadian under 35 owes a huge debt to Trudeau.... thanks Pierre for all those bilingual cereal boxes! It's amazing how much vocabulary you can pick up from constant exposure to French labelling.

That said, I highly doubt that French will be the second-most important language in the world 10 or 20 years from now. That language is being spoken around me every day. Dashan was ahead of his time.